Class Struggle 111 Summer

8/10/2019 Class Struggle 111 Summer

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Class Struggle 111 Summer 2014

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Briefs

Flag Burning

The NACT regime tries to cover NZs naked neo-colonial dependence on the US and China with a

new flag. Key says NZ is not dependent on the UKor Australia. His ideal solution is a black flag witha silver fern to state NZs nationalsovereignty.

This flag stands for NZs independence by drawingon NZs success as a sporting nation. Yet even thatis a lie. The All Blacks are sponsored by Adidas andAIG, German and US-based MNCs. The silver fernmasks NZs naked re-colonisation. Here is anational flag that would express NZs current neo-colonial status well.

The socialist group Socialist Aotearoa rejects allsuch pretence and wants to raise a red flag thatrepresents socialism and Tinorangatiratanga. Wesympathise, but before we can raise a socialistflag for a socialist Aotearoa, we have to overthrowthe capitalist state that promotes the ideology ofnationalism. Workers have no country! For us, allnational flags must be burned and replaced by the

red flag of international socialism. Only then willour flags represent socialist republics as part ofthe socialist united states of the world.

ChinasWin-Win?

Xi Jinpings 2-day stopover in NZ was a success. Itsealed astrategic partnershipupgrading the2008 FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with China tomatch Australias recent FTA. Its all about NZ assupplier of cheap food plus high tech inputs intoChinas rampaging economy.

This upgraded FTA access will be exploited by theUS when it succeeds in forcing NZ to sign up to theTPPA(Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement). USinvestors will have open access to grab control ofstrategic NZ IP assets and piggy back into China onthe basis of the win-win partnership. So NZ is nomore than a stalking horse for US entry into China.

The UShasmadeclearfromtheoutsetthat itmust

compete with China by penetrating its domesticeconomy. China developed rapidly by welcomingWestern FDI but on its own terms. To date the US,Japan and EU have been only able to buy intoChina as joint ventures. The profits from theseventures have not been enough to rescue the US,Japan and EU countries from economic stagnation.China has been able to quarantine its powerfulvalue producing economy from a Westerntakeover.

The rivalry between the TPPA and theAPFTA

(Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area) is really aboutgetting access to more value produced in China.China used APEC to promote the APFTA while theTPPA was stalled over US and Japan Agriculturaltrade protection. That is the meaning of thesymbolic bi-lateral dealbetween Xi Jinping andObama signed at APEC over climate change andmutual exchanges designed to divert attentionfrom great-power rivalry.

Despite its setback, the US strategy is to open upChina to FDI access on the same terms as the

TPPA. That is, US corporations dictating the termsand not China. So the next move by the US-ledbloc is to increase ownership of Chinas high tech
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1411/S00276/establishment-of-nz-china-strategic-partnership.htmhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1411/S00276/establishment-of-nz-china-strategic-partnership.htmhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1411/S00276/establishment-of-nz-china-strategic-partnership.htmhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/aotearoa-no-tppa-break-down-imperialist.htmlhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/aotearoa-no-tppa-break-down-imperialist.htmlhttp://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3261811&Itemid=1http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3261811&Itemid=1http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3261811&Itemid=1http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-china-usa-idUSKCN0IW08320141112http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-china-usa-idUSKCN0IW08320141112http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-china-usa-idUSKCN0IW08320141112http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3261811&Itemid=1http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/aotearoa-no-tppa-break-down-imperialist.htmlhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1411/S00276/establishment-of-nz-china-strategic-partnership.htm


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value-added domestic production as the life-line itneeds to survive the impending global recession.

In this power play, NZ is no more than a clientstate of both major players. Not only does NZprovide a back-door mat for the US into China. Allparliamentary parties join the chorus preaching USobjections to Chinas failure to live up to 'Western'

human rights and the rule of law, as barriers toopen access of the global free market.

So this is no 'win-win' for NZ. It is a pawn in thisheavyweight bout between the US and Chinaimperialist blocs. The way ahead for NZ workers isto fight both imperialist blocs by joining forceswith the workers in both China and the US, andthe client capitalists in NZ, to overthrow theirruling classes and unite to build a socialist world.

A liveable Auckland?

Much hot air has been generated by the promotersof Auckland City as a liveable global city. But hotair cannot disguise the reality that the workingclass has always paid for the city which exists onlyto serve the interests of the capitalist class.Liveable ultimately means living standards. Thetruth is that its population only lives in the cityto exploit or be exploited.

Fred Engels wrote about how capitalist citiesworked nearly two centuries ago. Industry is

concentrated along with finance and services inurban areas to maximise profits. Workers arehoused in the cheapest housing, transported theshortest distances, and worked for the longesthours under the most exploitative conditions toserve profits. Everything else is bullshit.

Democratic reforms, local body elections, Cityvisions, public consultation on planning, etc area cheap veneer pasted over the bottom line whichis accumulating profits. They are no more than thepretence that urban living is has more humanvalue than that of labour creating value forcapitalists. Even leisure activities in parks,playgrounds and beaches and art galleries, are nomore than the replenishment of workers physicaland mental capacity to produce profits. Aucklandis no exception.

From its founding by British settlers in the 1840sAuckland was constructed around the port, cheaphousing for workers in the valleys and colonialmansions for the rich on the hills, and essentialtransportation between home and work. Later asNZ capitalism developed, Auckland reflected thesechanges and went through several distinctstages,as the national economy went from a colony in the19thcentury, through the period of economic

nationalism from the mid 30s to 1980s, to theopen, deregulated re-colonised semi-colonial neo-liberal Super City of today.

What distinguishes the Super City from its earlierforms is SkyCity.com. The Super City concentratescity government in one big bureaucracy to ruleover the people on behalf of Sky City the highpoint of Casino capitalism. Auckland gambles itsfuture on the ponzi schemes of property, bankingand the stock market parasitic on the productionof value.

Today, Auckland is liveable for the parasiticruling class and the middle class that services it,and increasingly unliveable for the exploited,taxed, tolled and otherwise oppressed workingclass. The fate of Auckland cannot be separated

from the global economy. It will be ruined by theplunder of Casino Capital, or re-invented by thepower of the working class to expropriate Capitaland plan Auckland to meet the needs of theproletariat.

Global Crisis and Resistance

Michael Roberts quotesDavid Camerons speechat the G20 referring to Red Warning Lights on thedash of the Global Economy. The Great Recessionof 2008 has not destroyed enough capital for any

real recovery to take place. Therefore, the nextrecession is already on the horizon. The problem isthe squillions of QE has not induced bosses toinvest in production because the devaluation ofconstant capital (non-labour inputs) and variablecapital (real wages) have not been sufficient torestore profits.

That is, while capital is not been devalued orwritten off, it represents a cost of production thatcannot be recovered profitably. The main reasonfor this failure is the resistance of the working

class to further exploitation. Therefore despiteglobal austerity workers face much bigger attackson their living standards and therefore their lives.
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Yet, despite all capitals efforts, we find workers,from Gaza to Mexico, rising up in opposition tothese attacks and to the state forces that areunleashed to smash resistance. So far the balanceof class forces is holding. But the fact that theruling classes have been forced to deploy militaryrepression everywhere proves that we are in a pre-

revolutionary situation. Either the worlds workersovercome their national and sectarian divisionsand unite as aninternational force, orthey will be isolated anddestroyed by the rulingclass and its mercenariesand paramilitaries.

Unless capitalism isunderstood as a classstruggle between capital

and labour we cant seelabours historic role asthe gravedigger ofcapitalism. Theeconomic crisis of capital caused by the TRPFopens up the world historic opportunity for theproletariat to expropriate capital and socialiseproduction.

Mexican 43 Uprising

The disappearance of 43 student teachers missing

since September 26 has sparked an angry nation-wide protest movement. The43 teaching studentswent missing from the Ayotzinapa Normal Schoolin the state of Guerrero. The Attorney Generalsaid they had been killed by a local gang after theMayor of Iguala, Jos Luis Abarca, ordered thepolice to detain the protesting students. Mexicospresident, Enrique Pea Nieto defended the arrestof the students to avoid violence. A wave ofprotest exploded across the state and spreadacross the whole country and internationallyagainst this state crime.

Underlying this situation is the re-opening of thefrozen Mexican national revolution thatthreatens to overthrow the neo-liberal regime andcomplete the permanent revolution. Reactions onthe left range fromAmnesty Internationalchargingthe Mexican state with condoning a wave of extra-judicial killings. We say this reformist positionsows the illusion that the crimes of the bourgeoisstate can be punished by the same bourgeois stateto contain thegrowing militant resistance.

Slightly more radical was the national meeting ofallresistance organisationsthat accused the

government of complicity with organised crimeand the criminalisation of protest. Its demandsare to restore the Mexican state to its progressiverole in developing the national interest andbreaking with imperialism. All that is required isthe ousting of Mexicos president, Enrique PeaNieto, and its replacement by a populist regime

along the lines of the Bolivarian states. We saythat this position sows illusions in the Mexican

bourgeois state can play aprogressive role incompleting the nationalrevolution.

Marxists do not go to thestreets to defend thedisappeared withoutcalling for thedisappearance of the

bourgeois state. We arefor arming of the massesto resist the bourgeoisstate forces, led by a

Marxist party that calls for workers and poorpeasants to form workers councils, and fight for aworkers council government that breaks from bothimperialism and the corrupt national bourgeoisie.

OECD report fails NZ

TheOECD reportjust out on NZ has kicked off

another round of the debate on inequality. TheOECD seems to have adopted the now influentialneo-Keynesian line that capitalist growth dependson reducing inequality. Which is another waysaying that too much wealth at the top preventsthe bottom from spending on consumingcommodities?

The solution for the OECD is in line with Pickettyto tax the wealth that is sitting in banks oroffshore tax havens and invest in job creation.This would enable the impoverished masses whose

real incomes have been shrinking for decades tobuy more commodities and therefore stimulatecapitalists to stop speculating in existingcommodities inflating numerous bubbles andinstead invest in producing new commodities.

We examine this Keynesian revival and its chancesof success. To do that it is necessary to look at thecauses of capitalist recession and depression andwhat must happen before the conditions are ripefor a return to new capitalist growth. We do thisin the article Piketty vs Marxin this issue.
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NZ ruling class goes to WarAs John Key and the NACT regime struggle to decide how much support for the US waragainst IS they can give without jeopardising their warm trading relations with China, wesay that there is much more to be said about this capitalist war. It is in fact only the most

recent in a long history of wars into which NZ has been dragged as a semi-colony of firstBritain, then the US, as these imperialist powers fight their rivals, to re-divide the spoilsof war. That is, as long as they are not collaborating to defeat the threat of internationalproletarian revolution. Read on...

Imperialist war

NZ was dragged into the First Imperialist War onthe side of British imperialism. The ANZACSbecame cannon fodder on the beaches of Gallipoliand the trenches of the Somme. NZ workers andfarmers were dragged into the Second Imperialistwar behind Britain and the allies to fight

fascism. They died in droves in North Africa, Italy,the Western Front andthe Pacific.

Then NZ went toKorea, Malaysia andVietnam on behalf ofthe US ruling class tofight the spread ofcommunism. In eachcase the cause of thewar was to divide

workers nationally andsend them to war sothat they would notbecome an international class force capable offighting for a world communist revolution.

In all of these wars the interests of the rulingclasses and working class were diametricallyopposed. The ruling classes were pitted againstone another to divide and re-divide the world atone anothers expense. Yet when it came toopposing workers revolution, they put aside their

rivalry to unite against the communist revolution.The workers interests were therefore to opposefighting national wars unless they were fightingagainst imperialist oppression, and turning theirguns on their own ruling class and unite tooverthrow capitalism and bring about communism.In each case war armed workers and created theconditions in which workers could organise armedrevolution.

The First Imperialist war proved this. After theBolshevik revolution in October 1917, imperialist

troops on both sides began to actively oppose thewar. Within a year the German troops mutiniedand brought the war to a halt. The ruling classes

quickly signed a ceasefire, disarmed the troopsand sent expeditionary forces to attack the newSoviet Republic. It was the threat of revolutionspreading throughout Europe that caused the riseof fascist movements in every bourgeois state todivide and smash the working class. The failure todefeat the Bolshevik Revolution and to eliminatethe communist parties in the rest of the worldmeant that communism was now the main enemy

of all bourgeois states.However, because theTreaty of Versaillespunished a destituteGermany, the threat ofrevolution was greatestthere and a strong fascistmovement arose to smashit and to rally the massesbehind the territorial

expansion of imperialistGermany. FascistGermany also took uponitself to invade the Soviet

Union to complete the task of smashingcommunism.

The Soviet enemy

France and Britain declared war on Germany toprevent it and its allies from re-dividing Europe attheir expense. At the same time however, theirmain enemy remained the Soviet Union. The allies

sided with Russia as a temporary ally which playedby far the most important role in the defeat of theAxis. They then resumed their fixation ondefeating communism.

The Cold War began in 1948 when the Soviet Unionthrew the capitalists out of Eastern Europe. Theyalso backed the anti-imperialist struggles in thecolonial world in Africa, China and Indo-China etcbegan to break their ties with imperialism. At thatpoint the Allies united behind the US, the newdominant global power, to stop the spread of

communism, and to ultimately defeat the legacyof 1917. The anti-communist wars in Malaysia andVietnam in which NZ participated as part ANZUS


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were part of this long-term objective to restorethe soviet bloc to capitalist control.

The victory of the Western imperialists had to waituntil the collapse of the SU and its satellites from1989 to 1991 and the restoration of capitalism.China and Vietnam followed the same path of areturn to capitalism. That marked the end ofsoviet communism and a scramble to pronouncethe historic victory of global capitalism.

That triumphalism proved short-lived however.The ex-SU and ex-Communist China were not re-colonised by imperialism. Instead they becamepowerful statecapitalist regimes thatretained control overtheir economies andemerged as new rivalimperialist powers.

The rivalry betweencapitalism andcommunism, hastransmogrified into arivalry between twobig imperialist powerblocs today, the US-led and China-ledblocs.

The ISIS enemy

The fact is that imperialism today is re-dividingthe global world afresh and causing economic,political and military wars on every continent. Thistime the underlying rivalry behind every war isthat between the old Western bloc led by the USand the ex-Soviet bloc led by China. But as isalways the case where the threat of the rise ofproletarian revolution becomes paramount thisrivalry is temporarily suspended.

This is the case in the Middle East today. The twomain blocs want to defend the status quo. The USand is gendarme Israel want to continue todominate the MENA with the right to imposepuppet regimes to contain the masses struggles.Its object is to prevent the other bloc from gainingaccess to more oil and other resources.

Meanwhile, China and Russia, allied to Iran wantto defend their position in MENA also, includinggreater access to oil etc. As the Arab masses haverisen up to oppose their dictators, this has led to astalemate as both blocs have backed dictatorshipswhich had not been able to defeat massinsurgencies. The result is a vacuum in which the

masses have been increasingly driven into the

arms of the Arab petty bourgeoisie that are tryingto create a new state based on the IslamicCaliphate. Both imperialist blocs and their allies inthe MENA are against this enemy that has arisenout of their failed policies to defend their spheresof influence.

War and Revolution

In this situation revolutionary Marxists oppose allimperialist wars, invasions and occupations,including those against the Islamic Caliphate whichis a bourgeois proto-state that must align itselfwith one or other imperialist bloc. The Caliphate

as a theocratic state isno better or worse thanIsrael or Saudi Arabia.War betweenimperialism and theCaliphate is a process

of negotiation over thefate of the Arabmasses.

How does the US andChina/Russia decidewhich bourgeois factionshould rule the masseson their behalf in

Egypt, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iraq? Not by anyhypocritical humanitarian criteria but by theirruthless efficiency in suppressing the masses.

Only the Arab masses rallying and organisingworkers and oppressed as an internationalrevolutionary force can defeat both imperialismand their secular and theocratic nationalbourgeois dictatorships!

To support the Arab revolution, NZ workersmust oppose our lackey regimes alignment withboth imperialist blocs, and all militaryintervention into their proxy wars in MENA,specifically against IS. We must oppose thedesignation of anti-imperialist fighters asterrorist, and defendthe right of NZ citizens totravel overseas to fight wars they consider just.

Break with the imperialist militarism ofANZAC, ANZUS and the UNO!

Victory to the Arab Revolution!

For the Defeat of the US led coalitionagainst IS!

Defeat the intervention ofChina/Russia/Iran in MENA!

For a Socialist United States of MENA!


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Treaty Politics: For a Socialist Aotearoa!The latest revival of debate over the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi has flared upafter the Waitangi Tribunal reported that Maori Chiefs (Rangatira) never signed awaytheir sovereignty (political control) to the British colonists. This may provide more

ammunition for the Maori Party to squeeze some more beads and blankets from the NACTregime but it wont benefit most Maori. The Treaty wasalways a fraud, and Maori willhave to join the fight for socialism to achieve their self-determination as a people.

The Waitangi TribunalReporton the NgapuhiTreaty claim re-asserts the finding that Maorinever signed away their sovereignty when theysigned theTreaty of Waitangiin 1840. Most ofthe chiefs believed that they retainedtinorangatiratanga, or chiefly authority, overtheir people. That meant in terms of Maorisociety, the exercise of chiefly authority over

use of land and all things Maori.Hone Heke, the first tosign the Treaty, was alsothe first to declare war inthe North when it becameclear that the British hadeffectively seizedsovereignty. Many othertribes, including Te Arawaand Tuhoe, never signedthe Treaty for this reason.

Some Waikato chiefsincluding Potatau TeWherowhero refused to sign and formed the KingMovement to resist pressure to sell land.

The Treaty was always a fraud. There was neverany 'partnership'. The Treaty was a ruse todisarm Maori when the British did not have theforces on hand to establish a capitalist colony byforce. Maori soon found that this required thedispossession of their land and their conversioninto landless wage workers. Maori society was all

but destroyed and forcibly subordinated to theBritish Empire.

The Treaty settlement process of the last 40years has glorified the Treaty as New Zealand's'founding document' that was only dishonouredby excessive actions of military intervention andland confiscation. This has sustained thebourgeois liberal view that the Treaty can be'honoured' retrospectively by settling allhistorical claims with token distribution of landand money, the modern equivalent of beads andblankets.

The Waitangi Tribunal Report doesn't challengethis bourgeois settlement. It points out what

most iwi traditions have always known - thatMaori never signed away sovereignty. TheTribunal is merely adding its authority to thecurrent bourgeois legal fiction of the Treaty as apartnership of two sovereign peoples. So apartfrom some arid academic disputes, the Reportwill do no more than provide the Maori Partyembedded in the NACT regime with grounds to

claim bigger crumbs under the Cabinet Table onbehalf of the Iwi LeadersForum.

The vast majority ofworking class Maori will notbenefit in any way fromfurther crumbs tricklinginto iwi capitalistspockets.For them it is their classstruggle as workers againstthe re-colonisation of NZ by

US and China that isdominating their lives.

No reformist project to 'honour' the Treaty todaycan overcome the historic defeat of colonisation.Despite the massive wealth accumulated off thestolen land, and from generations of Maoriworkers, no capitalist government, left, right,Green or Brown can redistribute value or assetsto Maori workers when global capitalism is facingan existential crisis of economic and climatecollapse.

Capitalism is on its last legs and only survives byspeculating in the inflating 'prices' of land andexisting assets. For this reason any demandtoday to tax capitalists to compensate for thewidening income gap between rich and poor,would meet with massive resistance.That is whywe advocate a speculation tax as a transitionaldemand. The impossibility of implementing thisdemand would demonstrate the futility of taxingthe rich and prove the necessity of a revolutionto socialise the land and all economic assets sothat the working class can collectively plansociety to survive the capitalist endgame andclimate collapse.
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/WT/reports/reportSummary.html?reportId=wt_DOC_84146995https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/WT/reports/reportSummary.html?reportId=wt_DOC_84146995https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/WT/reports/reportSummary.html?reportId=wt_DOC_84146995http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangihttps://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/WT/reports/reportSummary.html?reportId=wt_DOC_84146995


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New Labour leader re-activates SplitReactions to Andrew Littles election as Labour Party leader tend to reflect what theRight, Left and Centre, want him to be. They are all partially correct since the classic

position of Labour leaders is to be centrists who stand in the middle and alternately face

both left and right to suppress class conflict and reconcile Labour and Capital. Littlepersonifies Labourite social democracy as a former union boss, now parliamentary wingboss. As a former trade union bureaucrat he is perfectly placed to sit astride the classdivide and speak out of both sides of his mouth. Yet, however hard Andrew Little tries tosuppress the class divide, given the unstable crisis-ridden nature of global capital, he willinevitably fail. He cannot de-activate the class contradiction and prevent the pettybourgeois and working class wings of the Party from tearing it apart. Read on for our fullanalysis.

The election for the new Labour leaderand hisperformance so far proves one thing; that the

Labour Party has failed to suppress the classcontradiction between the working class base ofthe Labour Party and its capitalist program. Theunions, and Mahutas second and third votes incaucus and party, pushed Little over the line todefeat Robertson the career politician oriented tothe middle class, and Parker the petty bourgeoisbusinessman turnedpolitician.

So the triumph of thepetty bourgeoisie

caucus majority thatdestroyed Cunliffe isincomplete. Whilethe left was defeatedwhen Cunliffe stooddown from thePrimary leaving twocentrist rightcandidates preachingplatitudes about Labour values, the election ofthe ex-union bureaucrat keeps the contradictionalive. We will explain why.

By regrouping around Little and Mahuta, the leftlives to fight another day. Little as the formerSecretary General of the Engineers, Printing andManufacturing Union (EPMU) represents thebureaucratic caste that has ruled the organisedlabour movement since it created the Labour Partyin 1916 as a moderate alternative to the radicalRed Fed. As EPMU leader he was complicit inCTU bossKen Douglaspolicy of the socialpartnership(class compromise) with business toshare the labour valuecreated by workers.

Little won (thanks to Mahutas second and thirdpreferences) and that signifies Labour will stick toits historical origins as the creature of the labour

bureaucracy that put profits ahead of wages. Butunlike a victory for the right, Little as the

candidate of the unions is also accountable tothem and this will keep the class contradictionbetween the mass of the working class and thelabour bureaucracy in the unions alive and kickingin parliament.

Not only that, Little has inherited the hopes of theleft. When Cunliffe endorsed Little he was

signalling that Littlewould stand forhonouring the historyof Labour as a party of

the working class and abreak with neo-liberalism. ThenNanaia Mahuta joinedthe race late andperformed very well inthe Primary as apotential leader of theleft. She carries with

her the interests of Labours core constituency ofthe low paid, Maori and Pacifica, as well as pakehaworkers, many of whom are disenfranchised and

non-voters.So no matter how far Little is pulled to the right tosatisfy the demands of kiwi capitalism in crisis, hewill also be pulled to the left by the labourmovement, and the left wing and working classfactions in the Party. Such a contradiction cannotbe permanently suppressed. Sooner or later theParty must split. The only question is what willreplace it on the left?

Left outside

Already leftistsBomberandMintohave written-off Labour as, yet again, National Lite. This sort ofresigned pessimism is what happens when you try
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to build a parliamentary party while the majorityof workers reject you and stay with Labour.Because lefts who criticise Labour from theoutside abstain from activating the classcontradiction from the inside, they separatethemselves from the majority of workers stillhamstrung by illusions in the parliamentary Labour

Party. Ironically it is revolutionaries who have noillusions in parliament as the solution tocapitalisms problems that see the need to putLabour Parties in power to split the party and gainmass support for genuine working class party.

Elsewhere, we see parliaments being transformedby the exposure of social democratic parties aspro-austerity and anti-worker, with the rise of newparties expressing the will of the dispossessed anddisenfranchised. Syrizain Greece andPodermosinSpain are two examples. Both are the result of the

masses rejecting the years of betrayal by theruling social-democratic parties that havehistorically embraced neo-liberalism.

What characterises these parties is their rejectionof traditional union bureaucracies and elitistparliamentary politicians who claim to representthe political will of the mass of the workingpopulation. Rather than defining workers as thetraditional blue collar manual workers and serviceworkers, the working class is now understood toinclude all those who work to live, including large

sections of the self-employed and unpaid workers.On top of this, it is increasingly clear that identitypolitics has not trumped class politics and masksthe common oppression that most special interestgroups face in the casualised, precarious labourmarket.

Who are workers?

Labour is also going down this road of re-thinkingthe working class. As the global slump we areentering kicks in, expect the dispossessed,disenfranchised and oppressed in NZ to rise up

too. Andrew Little seems to understand that theworking class must be defined to include the self-employed and unpaid workers. His view that theUniversal Basic Income should be debated reflectsthis reality. No doubt he thinks that a modernLabour Party can somehow be reformed to forcecapital to meet the basic needs of labour.However, Labour will prove incapable ofreconciling the needs of workers with the demandsof corporate capitalism.

Having this debate will wake people up to the

common class interest between self-employed onhourly contracts and wage workers who facingindividual hourly contracts. Both are heading

towards zero hour contracts to join theunemployed. As this common consciousnessdevelops the Labour Party will be pulled left andsplit along the class line to break away to form anew mass left party of the working people.

These new mass working class political formationsdo not yet represent a fundamental break withcapitalism. But their programs for populardemocracy, mass activism, social equality,internationalism, etc are impossible for globalcapitalism to meet. They will become the basis fora mass radicalization which takes the class war outof the talk show of parliament to contest power onthe streets. Now is surely the time for historicaloptimism as capitalism reveals itself as a threat tohuman survival, and the growing mass movementsfor change emerge on the streets. Meanwhilerevolutionaries have to do whatever they can to

speed up this split and the formation of a massworkers party and program.

Fight for a workersprogram

Little doesnt make up the program, the Partydoes. And since he is now the leader voted in bythe unions he must be held accountable by them.That means there must be an all out fight todefeat the reforms designed to bust the unions.Labour should walk on both parliamentary andindustrial legs with steel capped boots. A unionfightback will rub the NACTs noses in their free

labour market and rebuild the unions as fighting,democratic organisations of workers power!

Make the bosses pay! Smash austerity! The CGT isa Speculator Tax! Dump GST! A Living wage! Jobsfor All! Free education (like Germany)! FreeHealth! Massive state rental build! A livingUniversal Basic Income or Social Wage (UBI) to endprecarite and reward unpaid labour! Stop benefitbashing! Dump Parkers Pension Plan! Retirementage at 60! Abolish the GCSB and SIS! NZ out ofANZAC, ANZUS, TPPA and NSA!

These urgent economic and democratic demandsfought for by workers will be met with outrighthostility by the ruling class. This will forceworkers to engage in strike action andoccupations, and to form workers councils andmilitias.

When the imperialist monopolies send in theMarines to enforce the TPPA and stop us takingpower we will need an organised peoples army tosend them packing and elect a WorkersGovernment to socialise the land, banks and

corporations, and plan for a socialist economy!For a mass, revolutionary workers party!
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USA and China do the Pacific PivotThe two rival superpowers now openly face each other in the Asia Pacific. Karl Marx longago saw the Pacific as the key to the future of capitalism. Today it is the key to the futureof post-capitalism. Here the contradiction between the dying capitalist society destroying

humanity and nature, and the emergence of the revolutionary global proletariat strugglingto free humanity and nature from destruction, will be played out. Either we succumb tothe fight to the death of the Chinese and US ruling classes and get trampled in the process,or the international working class unites to overthrow their ruling classes, freeinghumanity to build a new socialist society in which production to meet human needs is inharmony with nature.

APEC

The two big power blocs are both dancing theAsia- Pacific pivot at APEC in Beijing. Looking atwhat is at stake here, the war against the ISIS in

the Middle East islittle more than asideshow. Therethe rival bigpowers try todance on the spotto keep the statusquo and the oilflowing while theyprepare for theprize fight in theAsia Pacific.

Obama has triedsecretnegotiations to doa nuclear free deal with Iran in exchange forbringing a halt to the raging Shiite vs Sunni proxywars in Iraq and Syria. This means the US andChina/Russia blocs finding ways to collaborate toneutralise the IS caliphate and do a power sharingdeal between Sunni, Shia and Kurds to partitionIraq and Syria.

The IS would participate in exchange forterritoryand oiland submit to OPEC dominated by theSaudis. The IS would become just anothertheocratic tyranny along with Israel, Saudi Arabiaand Iran. The US and China/Russia would come outof this deal with their respective spheres ofinfluence retained.

G20 PR exercise

Never mind the missile flexing at the G20 and theisolation of Putin the Terrible. This is PR for theplebs. This is desperation to ramp up support for

the US bloc to counter the Russia China blocexpanding into the EU and Middle East. NATO isbeing used to bloc Russia China from Europe and

frustrate their plan to run the New Silk Roads rightinto the heart of Europe and the Middle East.Thats because the other end of the Silk Roadsbegin in the Asia Pacific where the economicengine drives the world economy. When the

engine is racing itneeds to get onthe road.

The Pacific iswhere the rivalsare facing the bigshowdown for themost lucrativeeconomic spoils.The pre-fighttension was

evident at theAPEC and G20meetings wherethe big prize is a

victory for the US-led TPPA or the China-led FTA.Who will win the war for the Pacific? According toPepe Escobar, roving ambassador for the BRICS,China won on all fronts. Well he would say thatwouldnt he. But as the referee is he right?

Fighting on Four Fronts

Right at the start, President Xi urged APEC to "add

firewood to the fire of the Asia-Pacific and worldeconomy". Two days later, China got what it wanted onall fronts:

1) Beijing had all 21 APEC member-nations endorsingthe Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) - theChinese vision of an "all inclusive, all-win" trade dealcapable of advancing Asia-Pacific cooperation -seeSouth China Morning Post(paywall). The loser wasthe US-driven, corporate-redacted, fiercely opposed(especially by Japan and Malaysia) 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). [See alsohere.]

2) Beijing advanced its blueprint for "all-roundconnectivity" (in Xi's words) across Asia-Pacific - whichimplies a multi-pronged strategy. One of its key

features is the implementation of the Beijing-based
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US$50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.That's China's response to Washington refusing to giveit a more representative voice at the InternationalMonetary Fund than the current, paltry 3.8% of votes(a smaller percentage than the 4.5% held by stagnatedFrance).

3) Beijing and Moscow committed to asecond gas

mega-deal- this one through the Altai pipeline inWestern Siberia - after the initial "Power of Siberia"mega-deal clinched last May.

4) Beijing announced the funneling of no less thanUS$40 billion to start building the Silk Road EconomicBelt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Lame Duck Obama v the Putin Bear

Escobar is right. On all fronts China and Russiahave made a huge leap forward gathering supportfor their FTAAP against the faltering TPPA, and

putting in place a gigantic economic bloc based onSiberian oil/gas and the new Silk Roads thatplunge into theheart of Europeand the MiddleEast.

Obama comes out as thelame duckto PutinsRussian Bear:

What a drag the Bomber-In-Chief must be musing.The global economy is mostly a disaster. China, evengrowing at only 7% a year, keeps eroding hisindispensable nation aura. Japan has decided to copythe Federal Reserve and embark on its own kamikaze

version of quantitative easing. Asian nations keepfreaking out about a few rocks in the South China Sea.

And last but not least, Obamas nemesis, pesky Vladthe Hammer Putin, has just been crowned MostPowerful Leader in the world even if for the moststupid reasons (unpredictable head of a roguestate) [1] while he, the Nobel Peace Prize leader ofthe exceptionalist, indispensable nation, is nownothing but a pitiful lame duck.

The US will try to keep its global dominance withits TIA (Total Information Awareness) essentiallyinfo wars against its rivals, Russia and China and

its BRICS partners. But Russia and China arepreparing to meet this total spectrum dominanceat every level. SCO is the anti-NATO defensivealliance of the Russia China bloc. Its nowtotalwaragainst the BRICS.

Chinas Silky Road to Glory

Of course Escobar cannot refrain from cheering onthe BRICS as if this creates a new progressivemultipolar alternativeto the hegemonic US bloc:

APEC once again has shown that the more geopolitics

change, the more it won't stay the same; as theexceptional dogs of war, inequality and divide and rule

keep barking, the China-Russia pan-Eurasian caravanwill keep going, going, going - further on down the(multipolar) road.

Escobar describes a scenario of the rise of China-Russia, the decline of the US-EU as Germany alignswith the Eurasian Bloc. We differ with Escobar inhis view of Russia-China as that of a multi-polar

force that introduces order in the US Empire ofchaos.

As we argue inBRICS around the neck of theProletariatthe Empire of Chaosis not USimperialism but the laws of motion of capitalistimperialism in its terminal crisis. Russia and Chinacannot resolve capitalisms terminal crisis andprevent a third world war between the two rivalblocs. We can only overcome capitalist chaosbut overthrowing capitalism itself and imposing anew socialist world order.

Revolutionary Politics

The consequences of APEC and G20 for the AsiaPacific nations are clear. They are squeezedbetween the two major imperialist blocs. NZ forexample, is now largely dependent on Chinaeconomically. The APEC endorsement of theFTTAP led by China will tighten those links ofdependency because the Chinese economy, whileslowing down, is still expanding at 7% anddominates the Asia Pacific economy.

The US is attempting desperately to rush throughthe TPPA to shore up its economic power in theregion by locking its allies into US economic,political and military deals to limit Chinasexpansion. This can only create huge tension inthe ruling elites pulled between the two blocs.

China will win this contest in the long run becauseits rapidly developing productive capacity createsreal economic wealth, while the US strategy oflegally monopolising assets, technology and IPbacked by military force, is already being

overtaken and challenged by China and Russia.The labour movement in the Asian Pacific statesmust refuse to be drawn into the inter-imperialist rivalry that leads to economic andmilitary wars. The revolutionary left in Australiaand NZ must seek allies in the Chinese and USworking classes, along with those of the rest ofAsia and Latin America, behind aninternationalist strategy of socialist revolutionthat overthrows their capitalist ruling classesand puts in place Workers Governments and aFederation of Socialist Republics of the AsiaPacific!
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Australia Re-Colonised (or not)?Australia has just signed a Free TradeAgreement (FTA) with China. This means thatAustralia will be become more economicallydependent on China, exporting basic commodities

and importing finished goods. China will investForeign Direct Investment,(FDI) in Australia tocontrol the value chain as much as possible. Moremines will open while car plants close even steelmills will close. China will own and run the coalmines and iron ore mines (in Australia) and thetransport links to export this to China, where steeland cars will be produced and exportedinternationally. What that shows is that China hasfirmly ensconced Australia as a client state in itssphere of interest.

Australia nevercompletely shook off itsdependence on the bigimperialist powers fromits days as a Britishcolony. While itdecimated theAboriginals it neverfought a war ofindependence from theBritish.

Like NZ, Australiadeveloped as a white settler colony supplying foodand wool to Britain. Australia also foundresources and dominated mineral production forcoal, iron ore and bauxite (source of aluminium) asource of profit through differential rent.

Based on the economies of scale that large open-cast mining can provide; efficient productionprices, Australia was able to retain some profit.These are raw materials ripped from the land typical for a colony to provide raw materials tothe imperialist countries. With some secondaryprocessing to produce steel and aluminium theyalso extracted profit.

Australia also took advantage of protectedmanufacturing to accumulate capital in the post-World War 2 period. The finance sector grewbased on the value extracted from the workingclass and it banks dominate the NZ and PacificIsland economies.

It was these factors which lead us in the 1990s toconsider that Australia may have accumulated

enough capital and become a local (minor)imperialist power in the south west pacific region.

Since East Timors independence from Indonesia,we noted that Australia is exploiting East Timor oilin the Timor Sea in the manner of an imperialistpower.

As Britains influence faded Australia becamedependent on the USA. Australia has clearly acted(like NZ) as the USA agents in the Asia Pacificsince the Second World War. Has there been aqualitative shift with the entry of China as thedominant imperialist power?

Australia was certainly never more than a weak /minor imperialist. But does it still have thischaracter today as its dependence on the US andChina superpowers is confirmed by recent changes

in the Asia Pacific such as

signing FTAs first with the USand now China?

We need to review theamount of inwards ForeignDirect Investment (FDI) andoutwards (OFDI) fromAustralia through thefinancial sector both pre andpost the financial crisis of2008. To what extend areAustralian banks owned by

major imperialist banks? Weneed to review the ownership of the extractionindustries (eg. BHP, Rio Tinto) and check if thereis any industry where Australia dominates theworld economy.

So we need to decide if Australia was always aprotected settler semi-colony like New Zealandwith similar characteristics to the Latin Americansemi-colonies such as Brazil and Argentina whichwe have never seen as imperialist, let alone sub-imperialist despite such tendencies.

Or is Australia reverting from minor imperialist toa semi-colonial role of having export prices for rawmaterials prices fixed by the imperialist powers?Are its politics and culture now subordinated toboth U.S. and Chinese imperialism? Has itsproduction and manufacturing sector been thevictim of deregulation and foreign competition?

Has Australia now joined other minor imperialistpowers like Greece and Portugal that havedeclined economically to the extent that theyhave been reduced to the status of semi-

colonies?


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NUMSA: Which way forward?NUMSA broke with the ANC before the recent election. It was then expelled from COSATU toprevent it winning over a majority in COSATU to break from the ANC. This break however, is notcomplete. President Irvin Jim calls for thereturnto the Freedom Charter which has beenabandoned by the ANC. He presents the Freedom Charter as in the interests of workers when it wasalways a Stalinist program aimed at creating a Black bourgeoisie. Secretary General of COSATU

Zwelinzima Vavi has thrown fuel on this fire in his recentOpen Letterto the SACP slamming it forconsistently opposing COSATUs resistance to the neo-liberal policies of the ANC since 1994.WhileNUMSA calls for a united front, and a new workers party, without the rejection of the FreedomCharter, this will lead to a new popular front with bourgeois figures like Ronnie Kasrils, formerMinister of Information in the ANC. We look at the stand taken by different currents on the left andput forward out position for a revolutionary workers party and program.

NUMSA Splits from the ANC/SACP*

On the left we note the positions ofSocialistProject,theWASPand theWIVP.All welcome theNUMSA break with the ANC but disagree on how to

make this break complete. The most immediatedisagreement is whether NUMSA should fight tooverturn its unconstitutional expulsion andcontinue with its fight to get COSATU as a wholeto break with the ANC.

This is important because those like SocialistProjectwho think NUMSA should not challenge itsexpulsion abandon any fight for democracy inCOSATU, leaving the rank and file of other unionsat the mercy of the bureaucratic ANC/SACPdominated leadership. It leaves uncontestedCOSATU CECs unconstitutional action in blockinga special congress where NUMSA could advocate aCOSATU split from the ANC. At the same time itwrites off the role of COSATU and advocates associal movementperspective outside COSATU.

Second, those who want NUMSA to challenge itsexpulsion are divided over the use of the bourgeoiscourts. We say that since NUMSA is a workersorganisation and has fought for decades toenshrine workers democratic rights in itsConstitution, going to the courts to overthrow anillegal expulsion is not a matter of principle. It is atactic used only to advance the workersrevolution.

We are opposed to using it in the presentcircumstances. It takes the struggle out of thehands of the rank and file of COSATU when it isstrong enough to challenge the leadership, defendthe constitution and overturn the expulsion. Itseems that appealing to the Court is a tactic usedby the leadership to foster illusions in the Courtsas not part of the ANC corrupt regime, rather thanmobilising the ranks to throw out the corrupt

COSATU leadership.

Therefore, those who argue that NUMSA shouldabandon COSATU as corrupt and insteadbuild a

new union movement, are weakening themobilisation of the rank and file within the unionsto oppose the Irvin Jim leadership in going to theCourts, calling for a return to the StalinistFreedom Charter, and inviting progressive

bourgeois factions who are proven enemies of theworkers into the united front.

For example, the NUMSAUnited Front,at itssmall preparatory assembly ahead of the launchnext April, put the bourgeois politicianRonnieKasrils,an ANC Intelligence Minister responsiblefor collaborating with the CIA and Mossad, on itsinterim leadership commission! His workerscredentials are no more than opposing Zuma, andcampaigning for a no vote for the ANC.We agreewith the WIVP that the NUMSA split is in danger of

becoming ANC Mk2 by including corrupt bourgeoiscelebrities. Who is next: Julius Malema and hispersonality cult to revive the Freedom Charter?

Break from the Freedom Charter!

All of this points clearly to the main weakness ofthe NUMSA split from the ANC. It does not splitwith the Freedom Charter.It does not completeits break with the ANC/SACP program.If thebureaucratic expulsion from COSATU leads to anew bureaucratic labour movement, (despite theunited front, workers party, and socialism)

then the democratic will of the mass of workersmoving against the ANC/SACP/COSATU will faceyet another bureaucratic barrier to their classindependence and the socialist revolution.

The WASPapproachto this problem is to ignorethe question of program and talk only aboutorganisation. It supports going to court to makeCOSATU hold a Special Congress. At the same timeit calls for NUMSA to press ahead with its unitedfront to rally all COSATU and non COSATU unionsaround a socialist program. Yet it neither

critiques the COSATU leaderships illusions in theFreedom Charter nor comes up with a socialistprogram of its own. It is not possible to build anindependent trade union movement on socialist
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principles without a clear call to break from theFreedom Charter! Given the history of WASP in theMilitant tendency, we expect that it to be silentabout the united front failing to challenge theFreedom Charter and making compromises withthe bourgeois politicians like Kasrils which turns aworkers united front into a bourgeois popularfront.

That is why theWIVPcall to replace the FreedomCharter with a Workers Charter is correct.

In opposition to the Freedom Charter, wepropose the consideration of the development ofa Workers Charter, based on working classdemands, both democratic and Socialist, of aprogramme for working class power and aworkers government. Let us cast off the oldclothes and prepare the basis for a newrevolutionary working class party.

WIVP rejects the Freedom Charter as the programfor the national democratic stage in which theblack bourgeoisie comes to power. The NationalDemocratic Stage (NDS) did not lead the nation toindependence from imperialism and open the roadto socialism. 20 years of black bourgeois rule hasproven beyond doubt that the rule of imperialismhas been entrenched and the working class hasbeen subjected to imperialist super-exploitation.

The Workers Charter as summarised by the WIVP isthe TrotskyistTransitional Program.The task ofrevolutionaries is to raise it in all the unitedfront actions along with the call for the formationof a mass workers party. It would become arallying point inside and outside the unions for agenuinely independent workers movement.

Use the Transitional Method!

Underlying the Transitional Program is theTransitional Method. This is another word fordialectics, the method Marx developed as the basisof his revolutionary critique of capitalist politicaleconomy. Dialectics means that society is based

on a contradictory unity between objective realityand subjective reality where the latter acts on theformer to make a new objective reality. Marxismdoes not separate theory from practice. Theoryhelps us understand how capitalism worksobjectively as class society and this subjectiveknowledge transforms our class consciousness toguide our struggle to overthrow class society. Thehighest expression of this subjective reality is theMarxist Party which uses the program as ascientific weapon to advance the consciousness ofthe proletariat in its struggle to transform

capitalism into socialism!

Is South Africa right now, the objective reality isthe ANC bourgeois capitalist regime that overseesthe super-exploitation of the working masses in

return for a cut in the profits for the new blackbourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie trickles down someof its profits to buy the bureaucratic leadership ofCOSATU as part of the popular front to strangleany independent workers movement from breakingwith the regime. Marikana expressed the objectivereality of poverty in radicalising the subjectiveconsciousness of the miners. It is this radicalising

of the union base that has forced the NUMSAleadership to split with the ANC and its StalinistSACP bedfellows to suppress this classcontradiction. The result is the big fight insideCOSATU where the mass membership is moving tobreak with the Freedom Charter against theresistance of the bureaucratic leadership that isstill defending it as the program of the blackbourgeoisie.

In the words of Nelson Mandela:

The Charter is by no means a blueprint for a

socialist state...The Charter does not contemplatesuch profound economic and political changes. Itsdeclaration The people shall govern! visualizesthe transfer of power not to any single social classbut to all the people of the country be theyworkers, peasants, professional men or petty-bourgeoisie... For the first time in the history ofthe country the Non-European bourgeoisie willhave the opportunity to own in their own nameand right mills and factories, and trade andprivate enterprise will boom and flourish as neverbefore.

To activate this change in workers consciousnessto the point of abreak from both the bureaucracyand the bourgeois regimerevolutionaries mustraise the Transitional Program in the unions.Replacing the corrupt union bureaucracy with anew leadership accountable to the ranks wouldprove wrong Socialist Projectsclaim that tradeunions cannot represent the majority of workersbecause they are irrevocably compromised bytheir links to the bourgeois state.

Like the Marikana strike it would prove thatcorrupted unions like NUM can be replaced by rankand file struggle unions such as the AMCU and thattheir isolation, as in the recent Platinum strike,can be overcome by a united front of allunionised and non-unionised, domestic and unpaidworkers preparing for a general strike.

Finally, it would coordinate all united frontactions under the leadership of a mass workersparty in which revolutionaries would fight for theadoption of a transitional Workers Charter, forworking class power and a WorkersGovernment, as part of an international struggleof the working masses of the whole of SouthernAfrica for a Federation of Socialist Republics!
http://workerssocialistparty.co.za/numsa-expulsion-rebuild-trade-union-movement-on-socialist-principles/http://workerssocialistparty.co.za/numsa-expulsion-rebuild-trade-union-movement-on-socialist-principles/http://workerssocialistparty.co.za/numsa-expulsion-rebuild-trade-union-movement-on-socialist-principles/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/http://workerssocialistparty.co.za/numsa-expulsion-rebuild-trade-union-movement-on-socialist-principles/


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USA:

Organize Labor, Black/Brown Self Defense!

There is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!

The Working Class Must Never Forget Michael Brown!Organize Labor, Black and Brown Struggle!

The majority white Ferguson Grand Jury inrefusing to indict Darren Wilson is haswhitewashed the summary execution of MichaelBrown. This outrage will embolden every racistcop in the United States to continue their terroragainst the black, brown and immigrantcommunities. The cops know that all they requireis a complaint for sufficient cause to kill a blackperson; that their weight with the justice systemis so great that they can routinely commit legallynching and walk away free.The FergusonGrand Jury wasa StarChamber ofthe mostobjectionabletype, with theproceedings

dragging on formonths, with amajority whitejury that wasnot sequesteredduring themedia hype anda prosecutorwho madecertain therewould be noindictment. New

York State Chief Judge Sol Wachter once remarkedthat a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury toindict a ham sandwich.

In cases of police killings, indictments areextremely rare. The Brown family will likely noteven find any compensation in a civil court for thedeath of their loved one, as the media hype willhave tainted every jury pool. The report of theGrand Jury was nevertheless a freak report.

In 2010, in 162,000 Grand Jury cases in the U.S.,only 11 failed to bring indictments. That's.0000679, i.e., 6.79 times per 100,000 cases. Thisfact has to be known by Obama, legal scholar andleader of the Democrats. The Democrats have nofundamental commitment to defense of Black lives

or to Mike Brown's good name, but only to thesuperior bourgeois rights of property.

There will never be justice for the black, brown orimmigrant persons in the capitalist courts. As wewrote in our Class War supplement, There is NoJustice in Capitalist America!:

It has beenreliably establishedthat a blackperson is killed by cops or vigilantesevery 28hoursin the U.S.A. Only the most flagrant abusesof police brutality and terror come to light, while

the black,brown andimmigrantcommunitiesface dailyharassment,beatings andmurder at the

hands of theracist cops."

Darren Wilsonwill either bereinstated tofull duty andpay to be ableto freelyconduct racistgunplay inFerguson and

the St. Louis area, or he will broker his resignationand leave with a nice pile of money. Meanwhile,the protesters demanding justice will be facingmassive state repression at the hands of themilitarized police forces, the FBI, the fascist KKKand the National Guard.

It is only the organized self-defense of the massesbased on a political program of struggle that cancurb the excesses of an increasingly Bonapartistpolice state. There will be ever-increasing racistgunplay and there will be many more MichaelBrowns until the masses start to organize Labor,Black and Brown community self-defense militiasand carry out labor-centered actions to counterthe racist violence through political labor strikes.They shoot us down, we shut them down! A
https://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/for-labor-black-and-brown-defense-against-racist-police-terror/https://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/for-labor-black-and-brown-defense-against-racist-police-terror/http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdfhttp://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdfhttp://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdfhttp://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/26/marc-lamont-hill/unarmed-black-person-shot-every-28-hours-says-ma/http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdfhttps://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/for-labor-black-and-brown-defense-against-racist-police-terror/https://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/for-labor-black-and-brown-defense-against-racist-police-terror/


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fighting, multi-racial labor movement would havelaunched a general strike in reaction to MichaelBrowns murder.

We in the Communist Workers Group are not alonein calling for these self-defense organizations, butthese run headlong into the resistance of a tradeunion bureaucracy that has anchored its fortunesin the capitalist Democratic Party and who are

happy to collect the dues of the Police BenevolentAssociations, telling us that the killers in blue areunion sisters and brothers! So our first task is todrive the police out of the AFL-CIO and Change toWin labor federations. The police are not workers.They are the hired guns of Capital.

No more Fergusons! Right now, the frequency ofpolice killings is increasing and is at epidemiclevels, with more Americans killed by cops in thelast decade than have been killed in Iraq. In orderto reverse this trend, the social vanguard of thelabor movement, the black, brown and immigrantcommunities need to take to heart the historiclesson of the Deacons for Defense and SocialJustice, the best days of the Black Panther Party,Robert F. Williams and the Minneapolis TeamstersUnion Defense Guard.

The pacifists have led you into blind alleys andinto T streets for the police to ambush you, whilepolitically disarming the masses with impotentattempts to reform the police. We willremember the advice of Malcolm X who saidWell be non-violent with those who are non-violent with us. Until such time as racists fear fortheir lives and well-being, they will feel entitled

to act out their perceived white-skin privilege withdeadly force and none of the behaviour of thebourgeois state will give them any reason tobelieve otherwise.

An injury to one is an injury to all! Defend Ferguson protesters! Drop all charges and for the

immediate release of all Fergusonprotesters!

For organized trade union contingents

to Ferguson to demand justice forMichael Brown! National Guard out of Ferguson! Down

with the militarization of the police! No stop and frisk! Defeat racial

profiling! Down with La Migra andpolice attacks on immigrants!

For immediate full citizenship rightsfor all immigrants!

No faith in the bosses courts! We need our own institutions to gain

justice! Turn the meetings and mobilizations

into organizing meetings for Labor,Black and Brown self-defense guardsand tribunals!

Form up multi-racial Labor, Black andBrown self-defense guards to defendagainst racist police, KKK andvigilante terror!

For workers tribunals to bringmurdering racist cops and vigilantesto justice!

Build Labor, Black and Brown politicalstrike actions to bring these criminalsto justice!

Communist Workers Group USA (CWG-US):Email:[email protected]:www.cwgusa.wordpress.com
http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/http://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/mailto:[email protected]://www.cwgusa.wordpress.com/


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New Zealand

Piketty vs MarxThe publication of Pikettys bookCapital in the 21stCentury,on the historic inequality ofcapitalism, has sparked a debate globally, and in NZ with the publication of ThePiketty

Phenomenon:NZ Perspectives. We havecommentedthat Piketty fails to understand the basiccause of capitalist inequality so that his wealth tax cannot be the solution. The OECD Report onInequality goes further than Piketty to show that income inequality has a negative impact oneconomic growth. It argues that income must be redistributed to increase labour productivity.We explain that this solution means further increasing the exploitation of labour by capital. Itwill fail because capital in the 21stcentury has outlived its capacity to meet the needs ofhumanity so that humanity will refuse to be super-exploited. What is needed is Socialism in the21stCentury!

Pikettys New Law

Piketty challenges the crude assumption of neo-liberal economics, that capitalist growth works

automatically (trickle down) to produce equality.He has discovered a new law where capitalismworks so that those with wealth accumulate morewealth at a faster rate than per capita GDP unlessthe state steps in to regulate this inequality. Thesolution is to tax wealth by 1 or 2% to keep it inline with long-term GDP growth. Severalcontributors to the Piketty Phenomenon (PP) seethis challenge as a paradigm shift in economicsthat carries a progressive payoff for socialdemocrats. (Geoff Bertram in PP)

The rejoinder from the right is that the Gini Indexfor NZ has been flat at 32 since the late 90s.Bernard Hickey in PP, points out that wages,

benefits, Working for Familiesand subsidisedhealth and education kept the Gini rate flat. ButHickey says Pikettys work is a warning against anyfurther erosion of the welfare state.

Radicals critique the Gini Index as a bluntstatistic, and GDP as a measure of growth.Inequalities around gender, ethnicity, youth etcfly under Pikettys radar. Given the prevailinglabour market super-exploitation of women, Maoriand Pacifica, and youth workers, such groups aredoubly unequal. Radical economists have beendoing much more detailed work for years toredress such inequalities. (Susan St John in PP) ForGareth Morgan (in PP) a reformed tax structurethat includes a Tax on Capital Assets and an

Unconditional Basic Income will do this. Feministsand unions have been actually fighting on thestreets for such reforms. For Prue Hyman (in PP)
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taxing capital is not the answer. Capitalism as asystem that demands destructive and wastefulgrowth at the expense of inequalities must beunplugged.

OECD says inequality stops growth

The IMF and OECD have taken this challenge toneo-liberal economics a step further. They say

inequality stops growth. TheOECD research papersays that in NZ rising inequality since 1985 has cutGDP growth by 10%. The solution is a wealth tax insome form provided it is targeted at increasinglabour productivity.In the OECD language GDPgrowth depends on Human Capital Accumulation(HCA). It argues that taxing the top 10% will notdamage growth, implying that much of this incomeis not productively invested. The state shouldredirect this surplus unproductive capital intohuman capital.

Unlike classic Keynesian attempts to boostconsumption, or the bailing out of the banks, theOECD fixates on education. Putting money into thepockets of capitalists and/or consumers does notnecessarily restore growth. Just look at theprinted money that has flooded into the pockets ofthe rich. And raising the dole may lead to moreconsumption but not necessarily to moreinvestment. Work for the Dole everyone?

The research shows that increasing labourproductivity will increase profits and hence

encourage capital to invest in more production. Soimproving the quality and quantity of education[HCA] and creating incentives to work is theanswer. Has the OECD come up with education andworkfare as the holy grailof Social Democracy?No. We will show that while education is relatedto rising labour productivity, there is no guaranteethat that will induce capitalists to invest in moreproduction. This is no guarantee of profits. This isbecause increasing labour productivity meansrising labour exploitation.Piketty/OECD typepolicies cant work if the owners of capital resist

taxation. Or the owners of labour power resistsuper-exploitation. The progressives seem to haveoverlooked one small detail and that is the classstruggle!

Marxist critique

Piketty is reallylost without Marx.He lumps realproductive capital (that produces value) togetherwith unproductive assets (that dont producevalue) to make up his Pikapital. He discoversbooms periods when the wealthy accumulate much

more rapidly, then busts when they lose much oftheir wealth. Had he bothered to read Das Kapital,he would have realised that the switchback rides

of the wealthy is a symptom of the inbuilttendency forcapitalist crises.

This is atelling gapin Pikettys economics. Theunderlying reality he ignores is the exploitativerelation between capital and labour where wagelabour is employed to produce more value than itneeds to reproduce itself; that is, surplus valuethe source of profit. This is capitalist inequality

at the level of productive relations.Crises arisewhen profits begin to fall when the amount ofsurplus value is insufficient to cover total capitalinvestment. As the tendency for the Rate of Profitto Fall (TRPF) kicks in capital in plant andmachines and wages must be destroyed, andcheaper means of production employed, so thatthe amount of surplus value is now sufficient toreturn a profit on total capital outlaid. Thedestruction of wealth of Pikettys wealthy classthen, is merely a symptom of capitalisms crises offalling profits.

As Marx explains this relation of productionappears in the marketplace as a relation ofexchange as capitalists buy their labour power asa commodity.Marx calls this commodityfetishism. Exploitation of surplus value arising outof production is perceived to be based on unequalexchange in the market. Crises then occur whenlabour demands the full price of labour and profitsfall. Or, capital demands low wages, soconsumption falls; in both cases investment stalls.

Neo-liberal economics in the thrall of commodityfetishism argues that the market willautomatically correct for the share of wages andprofits so that demand rises and productionresults. The crises, wars and depressions thatPiketty stumbles over are such corrections. Yetas Keynes recognised in the 1920s, these painfulcorrections might be avoided if wages wereboosted by the state to create sufficient demandthat would then be supplied by thankfulcapitalists. Oh for a world with no more slumps!

NZ: a test of Marx v Keynes

However, Keynes was still a bourgeois economist.Boosting demand did not create new productionunless investment was profitable. Demand was notthe key factor; it was the rate of exploitation.The state could intervene in the market but onlyto the extent that it met the need for risingprofits. In NZ the election of the First LabourGovernment put this reality to the test.

However, far from representing a solution tocapitalist crises, The Labour Party acted toguarantee profits for the emerging NZ capitalistclass. The First Labour Govt of the 1930s was ableto create a welfare statefor workers becausethe protected domestic manufacturers operated at
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low efficiency and there was a demand for labour.Full employment was the hallmark of Labourssocial policy because it could be exploitedprofitably not because it could buy what itproduced. This was proven after the WW2 createdboom busted. The return of a crisis of fallingprofits could not be averted by the Keynesianstate boosting consumption, so by the mid 1960s

the TRPF was re-emerging as the cause of a newslump.

This time the return to profits required the end ofprotectionism of both domestic capital and thelabour movement. The destruction (restructuring)of productive capital (plants, machinery) and jobsand the driving down of wages, was achieved byopening up the domestic economy to the globaleconomy. The conditions under which Keynesianintervention operated from the 1930s to the 1960swere replaced by neo-liberal globalisation. Thedestruction of wealth by depression, its revival bywar/boom, and now its further restructuring byneo-liberalism, has inserted NZ into the global

division of labour where the concentration ofwealth and power in foreign and local cronycapitalist hands resultsfrom the rise of inequalityand deprivation in the working class.

So what are the prospects forprogressivepolitics,a revival of Social Democracy in defenceof the Welfare State, or even a modestPiketty/Morgan/OECD type wealth tax? Pikettyknows that the power of the wealthy to resist evena 1% tax on their wealth makes it a utopia. Butthis does not stop progressives in NZ from

proposing various forms of wealth backed up bythe OECD claim that profits flow from increasinglabour productivity!

Marxist Revolution in thought and deed

The detail that is overlooked here is that greaterlabour productivity creates more inequality notless. Not the superficial market inequalitymeasured by the national Gini Index, but theconcentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands,and the accumulation of poverty and misery in thelives of the masses of workers. Raising the rate of

exploitation means workers produce more perhour (because of HCA) but get a lesser share of the

new value produced. This confirms Marx law that

the rise in the rate of exploitation is set by classstruggle and is ultimately the barrier thatcapitalism cannot overcome. Workers resistanceto rising labour exploitation is the single factorthat guarantees that capitalist crises will sooner orlater result in the proletarian revolution and therise of socialism out of the ashes of capitalism.

We need a Marxist revolution in thought and deed.A Marxist revolution in thought meansunderstanding that capitalism is a finite socialsystem based on the ultimate destruction of the

only sources of wealth - labour and nature. Thesurvival of humanity depends on this consciousnessthat capital is nothing but the expropriation oflabour value, and that if labour is to survive it hasto take control over the value it produces.

The Marxist revolution in deed is the task oforganising the proletarian revolutionary class ascapitals gravediggers. It will require theformation of mass workers parties in every countrythat unite internationally to confront capitalismspower and wealth on every front, creating

workers governments with the power to socialisethe wealth expropriated by capital over centuriesas the basis for building a new socialist world thatvalues the survival of humanity and nature.
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Class Struggle 111 Summer